Ohio School Bans Afro Puffs And Braids

Posted By
Urban News Hour |
June 21, 2013

Hopefully this isn’t true. It’s being reported today that a school in Ohio has banned, well, just about 75 percent of reasonable hairstyles for school-age African-American girls with natural hair. No “Afro puffs” (the style that results when your hair isn’t straight and you pull it back) and no “small twisted braids.”

If this really is the case at Horizon Science Academy (according to the blog Black Girl With Long Hair, the new prohibitions came in a letter to parents about next year’s dress code that was circulating online), we’re left to assume that the administrators are in cahoots with the people who are into the alternatives to these styles. You know, the ones who support things like toddlers getting perms and 4-year-olds-getting weaves.Also known as people who have terrible ideas and no judgment.

Everyone is familiar with things that adult black men do and wear being pathologized and banned, as if there’s something inherently wrong with them, but this alleged targeting of what has been traditional and normal (not to mention cute) for African-American girls just about forever would be taking that to another level entirely.